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Theses & Dissertations Boston University Theses & Dissertations
2013
Cross-strait economic ties, Taiwan's
domestic politics, and
ChinaTaiwan relations, 1990
-2008
https://hdl.handle.net/2144/14083 Boston University
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Dissertation
CROSS-STRAIT ECONOMIC TIES, TAIWAN’S DOMESTIC POLITICS, AND CHINA-TAIWAN RELATIONS, 1990 – 2008
by
CHIEN-KAI CHEN
B.A., National Taiwan University, 2003 M.A., University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, 2007
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy 2013
© Copyright by
CHIEN-KAI CHEN 2013
iv
First and foremost, I would like to thank my academic advisors, Professors William W. Grimes, Joseph Fewsmith, Min Ye, and Cathie Jo Martin, for their useful comments on the drafts of this dissertation. Also, I am grateful to my parents, Sen-Hua Chen and Mei-Chu Chien, as well as my wife, Meng-Tsu Yu, for their selfless support during my Ph.D. study at Boston University. I especially have to thank my wife for not only giving me her unconditional love but also helping me edit this dissertation and pointing out the flaws of its previous drafts. Last but not least, I appreciate the scholarship provided by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, which constituted the major funding for the research project associated with this dissertation. There is no doubt that, without any of their help, I would not have been able to complete this dissertation. However, I have to point out that, even though they did play irreplaceable roles in the completion of this dissertation, all errors that might be found in it are of course all mine.
v
CHINA-TAIWAN RELATIONS, 1990-2008 (Order No. )
CHIEN-KAI CHEN
Boston University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2013 Major Professor: William W. Grimes, Professor of International Relations
and Political Science
ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines the relationship between economic interdependence and peace, an important research topic in the field of international relations, by conducting a case study of China-Taiwan relations. The key question addressed in the dissertation is whether and how the growth of China-Taiwan economic ties in the period from 1990 to 2007 played a role in the emergence of significantly less confrontational China-Taiwan relations in 2008. By taking into account the interaction between international and domestic political economy, it finds that (1) the relationship between economic interdependence and peace does exist in the case of China-Taiwan relations; and (2) it is Taiwan’s domestic politics, as it relates to the domestic conflicts between opposing political coalitions in Taiwan over the political relations and economic ties across the Taiwan Strait, that plays an important role as an intervening variable in such a relationship.
vi
List of Tables viii
List of Figures ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
Chapter One The Literature Review, Arguments, and Research Design 8
Historical Reviews of China-Taiwan Relations and Cross-Strait Economic Ties Chapter Two A Historical Review of China-Taiwan Relations, 1990 – 2008 38
Chapter Three The Economic Dimension of China-Taiwan Relations, 1990 – 2008 98
Empirical Evidence for the Relationship between Taiwan’s Domestic Politics and China-Taiwan Relations Chapter Four Taiwanese Nationalism and the Effect of Taiwan’s Identity Politics on Chinese Leaders’ Attitudes toward Unification, 1990 – 2008 152
Chapter Five Taiwanese Nationalism within the Taiwanese Government and Its Effect on Cross-Strait Relations, 1990 – 2008 201
vii
Empirical Evidence for the Relationship between Cross-Strait Economic Ties and Taiwan’s Domestic Politics
Chapter Six
The Beginning of the Domestic Conflict over Cross-Strait Economic Ties: The Emergence of Economic Winners and Their Conflict with the
Taiwanese Government, 1990 – 2000 237
Chapter Seven
The Politicization of Cross-Strait Economic Ties: The Emergence of Economic Losers and the Conflict between the Pro-openness and
Anti-openness Political Coalitions, 2000 – 2006 270 Chapter Eight
The Anti-openness Coalition’s Conflict with the Pan-Green Presidential Candidate and the Victory of the Pro-openness Coalition in the
Presidential Election, 2007 – 2008 314
Conclusion
Discussions of Findings and Suggestions for Future Research 337
Epilogue
The Domestic Conflict after 2008 and the 2012 Presidential Election 348
Bibliography 380
viii Table 5.1
Taiwanese nationalism within the Taiwanese government and its effect on
China-Taiwan relations 231
Table 5.2
The level of tension between China and Taiwan (1990 – 2008) 232
Table 6.1
The services and the manufacturing sectors in Taiwan’s economy 240
Table 6.2
The share of Taiwanese investment in China by Taiwan’s economic sectors 241
Table 6.3
The cleavage between the economic winners and losers (1990 – 2008) 246
Table 6.4
The global manufacture share of laptops (2002 – 2005) 247
Table 6.5
The global manufacture share of L.C.D. (2000 – 2005) 247
Table 6.6
The public attitude toward the policy of “no haste, be patient” (1997 – 1999) 262
Table 10.1
The debate over the C.E.C.A./E.C.F.A. 361
Table 10.2
The public support for the C.E.C.A./E.C.F.A. 362
Table 10.3
The polling about the E.C.F.A. televised debate conducted by the four largest
ix List of Figures
Figure 2.1
The number of A.R.A.T.S.-S.E.F. meetings (1990-2008) 94
Figure 2.2
The number of A.R.A.T.S.-S.E.F. agreements and documents (1990-2012) 96
Figure 3.1
The trend of growing cross-strait economic ties (1990-2008) 149
Figure 4.1
The “Taiwan-first” sentiment among the Taiwanese people 155
Figure 4.2
The “anti-unification” tendency among the Taiwanese people 157
Figure 4.3
The “Taiwan-first” sentiment within the Taiwanese government 163
Figure 4.4
The “anti-unification” tendency within the Taiwanese government 166
Figure 4.5
Factors leading to Jiang’s impatience and Hu’s patience about unification 194
Figure 5.1
Various interpretations of one-China 204
Figure 5.2
Various stances on unification 204
Figure 5.3
x Figure 5.4
Taiwan’s China policy (1990 – 2008) 208
Figure 5.5
Taiwan’s domestic politics and China-Taiwan relations (2001-2008) 235
Figure 8.1
Opinions about the speed of the growth of economic ties 324
Figure 8.2
Opinions about restriction on Taiwanese investment in China 325
Figure 8.3
The support rate for the direct cross-strait transport link 327
Figure 9.1
A framework for the study of China-Taiwan relations on the basis of
xi AIT American Institute in Taiwan APEC Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
ARATS Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
ATIEM Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises on Mainland CCP Chinese Communist Party
CECA Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement CEPA Closer Economic Partnership Agreement
DPP Democratic Progressive Party
ECFA Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement FAPA Formosan Association for Public Affairs FDI Foreign Direct Investment
FTA Free Trade Agreement GDP Gross Domestic Product
GNU Guidelines for National Unification IC Integrated Circuit
IT Information Technology
KMT Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) NP New Party
xii PFP People First Party
PRC People’s Republic of China ROC Republic of China
SARS Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome SEF Straits Exchange Foundation
TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company TSU Taiwan Solidarity Union
UN United Nations
US United States (of America) WHO World Health Organization WTC World Taiwanese Congress WTO World Trade Organization
Introduction
The Taiwan Strait is one of the flashpoints of today’s world. The current rivalry between China and Taiwan1 originally began in 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek and his followers fled to Taiwan after their defeat by the Chinese communists in the Chinese civil war which erupted immediately after the end of the Second World War.2 Three “Taiwan Strait Crises” have occurred since then, and the Taiwan issue, as both China’s domestic concern and an international problem, has not been officially resolved so far. However, while it seems that there will be no ultimate solution to the problem concerning so called “cross-strait relations” in the foreseeable future, two developments across the Taiwan Strait caught people’s attention: (1) the dramatic growth of China-Taiwan economic ties since the late 1980s; and (2) the emergence of the relatively less confrontational China-Taiwan relations after the 2008 China-Taiwanese presidential election which vividly contrasted with the very confrontational relations between them over the previous decade before the election.
The main purpose of my dissertation is to explain these developments, examining whether and how the economic ties across the Taiwan Strait played a role in the emergence of the relatively less confrontational China-Taiwan relations in 2008. As some scholars of international relations argue, the growth of economic ties between two
1
“China” refers to the Chinese mainland and the islands that are ruled by the government of the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) in Beijing, and “Taiwan” refers to the island of Taiwan and other islands around it that are ruled by the government of the Republic of China (R.O.C.) in Taipei; also, the “Chinese
government” refers to the P.R.C. government while the “Taiwanese government” refers to the R.O.C. government.
countries should decrease the likelihood of militarized conflicts between them. On the basis of their arguments, can we say that the growth of the economic ties across the Taiwan Strait beginning in the late 1980s finally reversed the confrontational nature of China-Taiwan relations, resulting in fewer cross-strait conflicts in 2008? Specifically, did the growth of cross-strait economic ties in the period from 1990 to 2007 play a role in the emergence of the relatively less confrontational relations between China and Taiwan after the 2008 presidential election? More importantly, if it did play a role, how did cross-strait economic ties affect China-Taiwan relations? These are the questions I address in my dissertation.
As my research reveals, the relationship between economic ties and peace does exist in the case of China-Taiwan relations. Crucially, however, it is Taiwan’s domestic politics that plays a key role as an intervening variable in this relationship. More specifically, focusing on the period from 1990 to 2008, I find that, first of all, China-Taiwan economic ties brought about a political cleavage between the China-Taiwanese who benefited from the ties (the economic winners) and those who were harmed by them (the economic losers). Second, both pro-independence and anti-independence Taiwanese politicians (the “Pan-Green” and the “Pan-Blue” politicians, respectively) exploited that cleavage to their own political advantages, with the Pan-Green forming an anti-openness coalition with the economic losers in opposition to a pro-openness coalition between the Pan-Blue and the economic winners. Third, in the ensuing domestic conflict over China-Taiwan economic ties, the China-Taiwanese general public was convinced that those ties would benefit Taiwan’s economy in general and therefore became supportive of the ties, a
development that politically benefited the pro-openness coalition and eventually led to the election of an anti-independence Taiwanese president. Finally, the emergence of an anti-independence Taiwanese government significantly decreased the level of confrontation between China and Taiwan.
Here, several developments since the early 1990s in Taiwan’s domestic politics, which have combined to make Taiwan’s domestic politics a key that links cross-strait economic ties to China-Taiwan relations, are worth noting. First and foremost, identity politics, which has emerged as a major issue in Taiwan’s domestic politics since the early 1990s, has become one of the most important factors that affect China-Taiwan relations. The growth of Taiwanese identity and the spread of anti-unification or even pro-independence positions in the Taiwanese society have made the Taiwanese people as well as their government no longer interested in the unification of China and Taiwan, a very unfortunate development for China which regards the unification as a sacred national mission that it has to accomplish no matter what. As a result, many of the conflicts across the Taiwan Strait since the early 1990s had resulted from China’s aggressive responses to what it believed was Taiwan’s “separatist” behavior. It was not until 2008 when there was a Taiwanese government explicitly anti-independence that China-Taiwan relations became significantly less confrontational.
At the same time, the disputes over identity that occurred in Taiwan also led to the formation of two confronting political camps in Taiwan’s domestic politics in the early 2000s: the pro-independence “Pan-Green” and the anti-independence “Pan-Blue.” Following the emergence of the political conflict between the Green and the
Pan-Blue, Taiwan’s domestic politics started to play a significant role in mediating the economic ties and the political relations across the Taiwan Strait when the issues of cross-strait economic ties were politicized by these two political camps. Starting in the early 2000s, the Pan-Green and the Pan-Blue began to mobilize and work with the economic losers and winners who articulated their demands for fewer and more cross-strait economic ties, respectively. This development in turn resulted in the combination of pro-independence and openness forces on the one side and the blending of anti-independence and pro-openness forces on the other, leading to the emergence of two big political coalitions in Taiwan’s domestic politics with regard to cross-strait economic ties. Eventually, the Chinese government was also involved in this new political landscape in Taiwan when it began to work with the pro-openness coalition between the Pan-Blue and the economic winners in the mid-2000s to strengthen cross-strait economic ties and advocate the economic benefits of these ties to Taiwan, hoping its effort could help the anti-independence Pan-Blue win the Taiwanese presidency that was controlled by the pro-independence Pan-Green at that time. Its effort did finally pay off when the Pan-Blue candidate, Ma Yin-jeou, won the presidential election in 2008.
Taiwan’s democratization throughout the 1990s is another development that matters. Democratization opened up the political market in Taiwan, which used to be dominated by the authoritarian government, liberating the Taiwanese society from official ideologies and making the circulation and exchange of different ideas about China-Taiwan relations possible for the first time. For one thing, it has allowed the Taiwanese general public to freely express their opinions about the issues of unification and independence. For
another thing, it has encouraged the Taiwanese people, especially the economic winners and losers, to articulate their opinions about cross-strait economic ties. Facing the looming democratic atmosphere and competing with each other in the unprecedentedly free political market, Taiwanese politicians from both of the ruling and opposition parties all began to mobilize and appeal to various groups of people to their own political advantages, trying to win as many votes as possible in elections. This newly established democratic system, as a result, paved the way to the emergence of the coalition between the Pan-Green and the economic losers and the coalition between the Pan-Blue and the economic winners that I just mentioned. Most importantly, through elections especially the presidential ones where candidates provide different platforms on China-Taiwan relations, the democratic system has gradually enabled the Taiwanese general public to have the final say on what policies they want their government to make and implement on China-Taiwan relations and cross-strait economic ties, a development that has increasingly encouraged the Chinese government to keep “placing hope (about unification) on the Taiwanese people.” After the 2008 Taiwanese presidential election, part, if not all, of this hope the Chinese government had placed on the Taiwanese people was finally realized when the result of that election revealed that the Taiwanese public was anti-independence, wanted Taiwan to get along with China, and preferred to have more cross-strait economic ties.
These findings of my dissertation are both academically and practically important. Academically, whether economic ties among countries lead to peace is a question that has been of interest to many scholars for a long time. Given the long rivalry between China
and Taiwan that has lasted for more than sixty years and the high intensity of their rivalry that concerns disputes over sovereignty and identity, the case of China-Taiwan relations is one of the best for the aforementioned research topic: as a case involving a divided country, the case of China-Taiwan relations constitutes a “least-likely” case (i.e. a case that is very unlikely to validate a certain theory)3 for the study of the relationship between economic interdependence and peace.
Also, my case study that takes “Taiwan’s domestic politics” into account can contribute to the general literature on the relationship between economic interdependence and international relations by providing an in-depth analysis of the “causal mechanism” of the relationship among economic interdependence, domestic politics, and international relations that many large-N studies which try to generalize the “causal effect” of economic interdependence on peace could not deal with.4 In addition, although the findings of my single-case study might not necessarily be generalizable, I believe, as Arend Lijphart argues about case studies, it can provide valuable information for theory-building (e.g. the interaction between domestic and international political economy) and improve the quality of current theories (e.g. the effect of economic interdependence on peace).5 Given the fact that the case of China-Taiwan relations, as I have mentioned, is a “least-likely” case for the study of the relationship between economic interdependence and peace, its value for the second purpose is particularly important (i.e. improving the quality of the theory about the effect of economic interdependence on peace).
3 Eckstein 1975; George 1979, 53; King, Keohane & Verba 1994, 209-210; and Gerring 2007, 115-119, and
213.
4
Gerring 2007, 43-48.
Finally, my study is also practically important. As Cal Clark argues, “Taiwan is probably the only issue that could seriously threaten to destabilize Sino-American relations.”6
Therefore, an answer to why and how the level of cross-strait confrontation increases and decreases is very important because it can help policymakers of the countries that have interests in cross-strait relations (i.e. China, Taiwan, and the United States) better manage the situation and make right decisions to prevent a war in the Taiwan Strait that might involve two of the biggest powers in our international system, i.e. China and the U.S.
6
Clark 2002b, 753. For more discussions about the tangled interests that China and the U.S. have in Taiwan, see Bernstein & Munro 1997, 30; Tucker 2002, 24; White 2004, 319-320; and Kennedy 2007.
Chapter One
The Literature Review, Arguments, and Research Design
Since 1949, the confrontation between China and Taiwan has generally resulted from the Chinese and the Taiwanese unilateral announcements and behavior about their relations that were regarded by the other side as provocative. Yet, in the first half of the 1990s, after four decades of zero-sum rivalry, China and Taiwan, though still taking unilateral provocative actions against each other, tried for the first time to formally communicate with each other and resolve the common political and non-political problems they faced in a bilateral way through a series of meetings between China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (A.R.A.T.S.) and Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (S.E.F.). However, this is not a unidirectional shift. Starting in the mid-1990s, this prospect of China and Taiwan bilaterally resolving the cross-strait problems began to fade away when the intensity of China’s and Taiwan’s provocative unilateral actions against each other significantly grew. As a result, the formal contact between China’s A.R.A.T.S. and Taiwan’s S.E.F. became irregular in the second half of the 1990s and was completely suspended in the period from 2000 to 2007.
Interestingly, the aforementioned period of confrontation suddenly ended after the Taiwanese presidential election in March 2008, and the prospect of China and Taiwan bilaterally resolving the cross-strait problems immediately emerged again after the new Taiwanese leader, Ma Ying-jeou, took office. One month after the new Taiwanese president was inaugurated, in June 2008, the contact between China’s A.R.A.T.S. and
Taiwan’s S.E.F. was resumed, nine years after it was ceased. Simply speaking, the level of confrontation after the 2008 Taiwanese presidential election is much lower than that before the election: while there were various provocative unilateral actions and relatively few conciliatory bilateral interactions in the period from 1990 to 2007, both sides’ willingness to resolve common problems in a bilateral way rapidly grew and the number of unilateral provocative actions against each other significantly decreased after the 2008 Taiwanese presidential election.
Among many developments in the period from 1990 to 2007, that could explain why China-Taiwan relations became relatively less confrontational in 2008 after a decade of highly intense confrontation between them, one that has particularly interested scholars who observe cross-strait relations closely is the growth of the economic ties between China and Taiwan in the aforementioned period. This is also the main focus of my dissertation. More specifically, the purpose of this dissertation is to examine whether and how the growth of cross-strait economic ties in the period from 1990 to 2007 played a role in the emergence of relatively less conformational China-Taiwan relations in 2008. By taking into account (1) the variable of “domestic politics” (as it relates to the domestic conflicts between opposing political coalitions over the issues about international relations and international economic ties) and (2) the interaction between domestic politics and international relations (as well as the interaction between domestic and international political economy), this dissertation demonstrates that, in the period from 1990 to 2008, China-Taiwan economic ties did eventually reduce the level of
confrontation in the Taiwan Strait; and most importantly, it is “Taiwan’s domestic politics” serving as an intervening variable that made this happen.
Literature review: the effect of economic interdependence on international relations The effect of economic interdependence among countries on these countries’ relations is a popular topic in the field of international relations. However, findings concerning this topic vary. According to liberals, economic ties between countries lead to peace. This liberal argument about the linkage between economic interdependence and peace appeared very early. Norman Angell argued in the early 20th century that the growing economic ties among the countries in Europe made a certain European country’s waging a war against its neighbors to destroy or confiscate their wealth worthless or even an economic suicide because, according to him, a European country’s national wealth largely depended on the cross-border economic activities between it and its neighbors.1 Among the contemporary liberal theories with regard to the relationship between economic ties and peace, Bruce Russett and John Oneal’s theory of “triangulating peace,” which is derived from Immanuel Kant’s idea of “perpetual peace,” is one of the best known.2 According to Russett and Oneal, there are three factors that, independently or aggregately, lead to peace: (1) democracy, which is related to Kant’s argument that, to achieve international peace, the constitution of each country should be republican; (2) international organization, which concerns Kant’s idea of establishing international federalism of free countries; and (3) economic interdependence, which originates in
1 Angell 1909.
Kant’s idea of creating a cosmopolitan law of world citizenship that can facilitate, among other things, commerce and free trade worldwide.3 In terms of economic ties, they statistically find that the likelihood of militarized conflicts between two countries significantly decreases when the levels of their economic interdependence (measured by the ratio of bilateral trade to G.D.P.) and/or their economic openness to the global economy (measured by the ratio of total trade to G.D.P.) increase.4 Generally speaking, liberals including the aforementioned scholars make three broad arguments.5 First, the costs of waging a war against your economic partner are very high. Simply speaking, if you wage a war against a country with which you trade and in which you invest, you actually fight against yourself because a war between you and that country must have a negative effect on your own economy. Second, economic ties change countries’ preferences. When the economic ties between two countries grow, and these two countries become economically interdependent or even integrated, economic interests – compared with other national interests such as military buildup – become the most important in the relations between them. Third, strong economic ties make non-military threats such as economic sanctions credible; therefore, when there is a conflict between two countries that have strong economic ties, non-military threats are very likely to be the ways used by them to deal with each other.
There are realists disagreeing with the liberal view mentioned above. Many realists criticized the liberals like Woodrow Wilson who, in the post-WWI era, argued that
3 Russett & Oneal 2001, 29. 4Ibid., 154-155.
international organizations such as the League of Nations and free trade among countries would lead to peace for being utopians. Among those realists, Edward Hallett Carr was one of the most famous.6 According to him, the liberal idea about peace in the post-WWI era was nothing but utopian on the basis of the facts that (1) the League of Nations did not prevent Japan from invading Manchuria and Italy from occupying Abyssinia, and (2) many developing countries like Germany and Japan adopted economic protectionism to develop their economy in order to economically compete with other advanced countries like Britain. Based on these observations, he concluded that countries were selfish and always tried to increase their military, economic, and ideological power to protect and pursue their national interests, and therefore we should give up utopianism and focus on power politics when dealing with issues about international relations. Albert Hirschman also argues that countries, especially large ones, tend to exploit international trade to expand their national power.7 He argues that trade relations between two countries would become relationships of dependence, influence, or even domination if one of them cannot afford losing such trade relations. There are three empirical phenomena demonstrating that large trading countries do try to use international trade as a weapon to create power disequilibrium against small trading countries: (1) a large country tends to direct its trade to smaller trading countries which, compared with larger trading countries, have more difficulties in stopping the trade with it and thus are more likely to become economically dependent on it; (2) a large country may try to make a small country economically dependent on it by changing the economic structure of the latter and therefore making the
6 Carr 1964. 7 Hirschman 1945.
latter’s economy exclusively complementary to its economy; and (3) because of the two aforementioned points, a small country seeks to distribute its trade among many different countries in order to prevent itself from being economically dependent on a single large country.
The relative gains theory is another realist theory that contradicts the liberal view on the relationship between economic ties and peace.8 According to this theory, the collective action problem embedded in the cooperation between two countries concerns not only cheating but also relative gains. Specifically, a country that knows its partner is not cheating in their cooperative relationship might still want to stop such a relationship if it finds that its partner gains relatively more than it does from the cooperation. It is because, given that your partner today might become your enemy tomorrow in an anarchical international system, allowing your current partner to achieve relatively more gains than you do would probably make it a formidable enemy in the future when your relationship turns from partnership into rivalry. Therefore, on the basis of this theory, it can be argued that for a country that is asymmetrically dependent on another country, the fact that it gains relatively less while its partner gains relatively more would make it feel insecure, and thus, to such a country, national security would be more important than economic benefits. From this point of view, economic interdependence does not necessarily lead to peace.
A study of trade between Japan and the United States by Robert Gilpin also appears to rebut the liberal view on the relationship between economic interdependence and
peace.9 According to him, economic interdependence may actually be a source of conflict rather than peace: Japan’s large trade surplus against the U.S., resulting from Japan’s unique trade pattern which focuses on “inter-industry” rather than “intra-industry” trade, has been the major source of economic conflict between the two countries. Specifically, while Japan exports many manufactured products (e.g. motor vehicles, electronics, high-tech products, etc.), it imports primarily commodities (e.g. food, raw materials, fuels, etc.) but disproportionately few manufactured products it produces; the conflict thus emerges when the U.S. accuses the Japanese government of intentionally pursuing this unequal trade pattern while the Japanese government insists on keeping this pattern in order to protect and develop its indigenous industries.
There are also studies showing that the relationship between economic interdependence and peace is actually more complicated than both liberals and realists think. For example, according to Katherine Barbieri, the relationship is not linear but curvilinear: while a low to moderate level of interdependence may lead to peace, a high level of interdependence increases the likelihood of conflict.10 The theory of trade expectations also demonstrates that the expectations about future trade have an effect on the relationship between interdependence and peace.11 More specifically, if highly interdependent countries expect that the level of their trade will remain high in the future, interdependence brings about peace; in contrast, if they expect that the level will become low, interdependence may lead to conflicts because, under this circumstance, the
9 Gilpin 2003. 10 Barbieri 1996. 11 Copeland 1996.
countries that are relatively more dependent on others might initiate war against those they are dependent on due to a fear of being cut off and thus losing national wealth as well as long-term national security.
An emerging pattern of China-Taiwan relations which simultaneously involves “economic interdependence” and “political divergence” makes scholars studying China-Taiwan relations become more and more interested in the effect of cross-strait economic ties on China-Taiwan relations.12 However, like the general debate over the relationship between economic ties and peace, there is no consensus on whether the growth of the economic ties between China and Taiwan is leading or will lead to peace in the Taiwan Strait. On the basis of the liberal view, it is argued that when the economic ties between China and Taiwan become stronger, war in the Taiwan Strait becomes highly unlikely. More specifically, if there are strong cross-strait economic ties, any war between China and Taiwan would be highly costly to both sides given the huge damage it might cause to their economy; in addition, economic ties enhance common economic interests between China and Taiwan and therefore make political conciliation possible. As Karen Sutter argues, the deepening cross-strait economic cooperation will one day lead to peaceful China-Taiwan relations because stability, which is very important to both China’s and Taiwan’s economic interests, is now becoming a common value shared by both sides and a pragmatic alternative to independence or unification.13 There are also scholars who, while admitting that the economic ties between China and Taiwan are not sufficient to resolve the whole cross-strait political and military conflicts, believe that those ties do
12 Zhao 1997. 13 Sutter 2002.
have an ability to ease the cross-strait tension to a significant degree. For example, Greg Mastel argues that cross-strait economic ties are “strong countervailing forces” that can change at least some of China’s and Taiwan’s bellicose attitudes toward each other.14 Paul J. Bolt also believes that, although cross-strait economic ties might not be able to completely prevent China and Taiwan from taking disruptive political actions against each other, the ties do play a growing role in stabilizing China-Taiwan relations because they are making the aforementioned political actions become more and more costly to each side of the Taiwan Strait.15 Cal Clark makes a similar argument as well.16 According to him, despite the fact that the core problem at the level of “high politics” in cross-strait relations (i.e. the problem about sovereignty) will hardly be resolved in the foreseeable future, the growing economic transactions between China and Taiwan at the level of “low politics” are attenuating the political hostility that we see at the level of “high politics” when China and Taiwan make efforts to moderate the cross-strait tension to a manageable degree in order to preserve the economic ties between them.
There are those who doubt that economic ties across the Taiwan Strait will lead to peace. It is argued by some people like George T. Crane and Chien-min Chao that the economic integration between China and Taiwan will not decrease the likelihood of cross-strait conflict because the main problems that trigger the China-Taiwan rivalry are highly politicized ones (i.e. the issues of identity and sovereignty), and it is hard to imagine that either China or Taiwan will compromise on these issues despite the growth
14 Mastel 2001, 51. 15 Bolt 2001. 16 Clark 2002b.
of the economic ties between them.17 Phillip C. Saunders makes a similar point, arguing that even though cross-strait economic ties might increase the costs of conflict and provide incentives for moderate behavior, they would never completely get rid of the possibility of cross-strait conflict.18 Scott Kastner also finds that the evidence supporting the liberal view on the relationship between economic ties and peace is ambiguous in the case of China-Taiwan relations.19 According to him, in the period from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s, although the cross-strait economic ties grew, each side seemed to have no intention to treat the other side well: while the Chinese leaders continued to threaten Taiwan verbally and at times militarily, the Taiwanese leaders continued to provoke China. He further argues that the economic ties between China and Taiwan could keep growing even under the circumstance of confrontational cross-strait relations because, according to him, Taiwanese economic internationalists (i.e. the Taiwanese who benefit from and therefore support cross-strait economic ties) are powerful in Taiwan’s political system, and the Taiwanese political leaders are accountable to them.20
Ping Deng employs the relative gains theory to explain the Taiwanese government’s effort to impose restriction on cross-strait economic ties during the 1990s.21 According to him, the restriction was imposed largely due to Taiwanese political leaders’ worry that Taiwan’s economic interdependence with its rival, China, was actually giving the latter huge economic and political benefits at the expense of Taiwan’s national security; in other words, they were worried that cross-strait economic ties would strengthen China’s
17 Crane 1993; and Chao 2003. 18
Saunders 2005, 985.
19 Kastner 2006a.
20 Kastner 2007 and 2009. 21 Deng 2000.
economic power which might be transformed into military and political threats to Taiwan in the future. Some Taiwanese politicians also believe that the economic interdependence between China and Taiwan is asymmetrical because there is an excess of capital and job outflows from Taiwan to China; and, due to such asymmetrical interdependence, they are worried that Taiwan is too economically dependent on China and is gradually being economically “hollowed out” by China.22 Furthermore, China’s alleged use of cross-strait economic ties as political tools to influence Taiwan’s China policy also concerns them.23 Specifically, following Hirschman’s argument that I have discussed, they believe that China is trying to make Taiwan economically dependent on China in order to not only hollow out Taiwan’s economy but also use the Taiwanese business people who have economic interests in China to influence the Taiwanese government’s China policy-making. Because of the aforementioned concerns, these Taiwanese politicians demand more restriction on cross-strait economic ties, arguing that national security is more important than economic benefits.24
Argument: domestic politics matters
Three observations derived from the literature reviewed in the previous section are worth pointing out, based on which I will propose my answer to the research question of this dissertation (i.e. whether, and more importantly, how the growing economic ties in the period from 1990 to 2007 played a role in the emergence of the relatively less
22 Deng 2000, 971-973; and Wong 2005, 45-47 and 49-51. 23 Kahler & Kastner 2006, 534.
confrontational cross-strait relations after the 2008 presidential election) in the second half of this section.
First, most of the scholars, especially those who try to generalize the relationship between economic interdependence and international relations in a large-N study like Barbieri as well as Russett and Oneal, tend to treat countries that are economically interdependent as the units of analysis in their research.25 The way I see it, while it is reasonable to see a country as an independent actor in the international system because it has its own preferences and behaves rationally based on these preferences, it is also undeniable that a country’s preferences or foreign policies are formed through a decision-making process embedded in domestic politics. I believe that we would benefit from taking this perspective into account when examining the relationship between economic ties and peace among countries.
Second, when it comes to the case of cross-strait relations, there are some studies taking domestic politics into account. For example, scholars like Crane and Chao remind us that we should explore the Taiwanese domestic concern about the issues of sovereignty and identity when examining China-Taiwan political and economic relations.26 Also, Kastner tells us that the power of economic internationalists in Taiwan’s domestic politics has an effect on the making of Taiwan’s economic policy toward China.27 However, as I see it, although there are studies arguing well that Taiwan’s domestic politics matters, there has been no study systematically examining the broad
25 Barbieri 1996; and Russett & Oneal 2001. 26 Crane 1993; and Chao 2003.
causal relationship among cross-strait economic ties, Taiwan’s domestic politics, and China-Taiwan relations: while some focus on the first two variables, others concentrate on the last two variables.
Third, based on the two aforementioned points, I think a theoretical approach that takes both domestic and international levels into account and combines international economy, domestic politics, and international relations would be useful for answering the research question of this dissertation. Specifically, I will argue that the growth of the economic ties between China and Taiwan in the period from 1990 to 2007 did play a role in the emergence of the relatively less confrontational China-Taiwan relations in 2008, and, most importantly, Taiwan’s domestic politics is the intervening factor that links the former to the latter.
Here, before discussing my arguments in more detail, it is necessary to probe how international economy influences domestic politics and how domestic politics affects international relations.
International economy does have an effect on domestic politics. According to Ronald Rogowski, (1) people who benefit from economic openness will try to purse more openness, while those who do not benefit from or are harmed by openness will try to stop it; (2) people who enjoy a sudden increase in wealth because of openness will be able to expand their political influence (although, according to Rogowski, they might still lose) while those who are harmed by openness might be politically weakened; and (3) people who are in favor of openness and those who are against it will try to have their voices
heard in the domestic political arena.28 Similarly, Jeffry Frieden and Ronald Rogowski jointly argue that an increase in the level of a certain country’s economic openness to the global economy would strengthen the effect of international economic trends on the domestic economy of that country and lead to a domestic conflict in that country between the people who economically benefit from openness and those who are economically harmed by it.29 Moreover, economic openness might make a government more likely to change its economic policy in accordance with the changes in international economy. According to Geoffrey Garrett and Peter Lange, in a country that is economically open to the outside world, changes in international economy may bring about changes in the preferences and the power of domestic political and economic actors, which in turn lead to political pressure that forces the government of that country to change the existing policies or institutions in order to reflect the new domestic political and economic situations.30
As for the relationship between domestic politics and international relations, as Robert Putnam reminds us, they are mutually affected.31 Here, in terms of the effect of the former on the latter, he finds that, in order to make a deal in an international negotiation, the leader of a country should think of not only the preferences of his or her international counterparts but also the preferences of the domestic political actors back home. Barbara Farnham also makes a similar point and goes so far as to argue that foreign policy makers not only take domestic politics into account but also think about it
28
Rogowski 1989, 4-5.
29 Frieden & Rogowski 1996. 30 Garrett & Lange 1996. 31 Putnam 1988.
first.32 China’s foreign policy-making and international behavior are good examples of how domestic politics affects international relations. It is argued by many scholars (e.g. Joseph Fewsmith and Stanley Rosen, Peter Hays Gries, and Susan Shirk) that, when making the foreign policy with regard to a certain country, the Chinese government has to take into account the Chinese public opinions (i.e. Chinese nationalism) about that country; from this point of view, it can be argued that Chinese people’s nationalistic emotion toward the U.S. and Japan is one of the reasons why China usually has a hostile and uncompromising attitude toward these two countries.33 In the case of the effect of Taiwan’s domestic politics on China-Taiwan relations, in addition to the works I have discussed, Yun-han Chu’s study of Taiwan’s national identity shows that Taiwanese people’s identity and their attitudes toward unification and independence, which are among the major sources of political controversies in Taiwan’s domestic politics, have a great effect on the prospect of cross-strait relations.34 According to him, the “open-minded rationalists” in Taiwan (i.e. the Taiwanese in favor of neither unification nor independence), who constitute a relative majority of the whole population, have the potential in the long run to shift the current cross-strait political equilibrium in the direction of either unification or independence if their attitudes change for any reason in the future.
After demonstrating that (1) international economy does have an effect on domestic politics and (2) domestic politics does have an impact on international relations, it is time
32 Farnham 2004.
33 Fewsmith & Rosen 2001; Gries 2004; and Shirk 2007. 34 Chu 2004, 486-487 and 503-506.
to introduce my own arguments. My arguments, which concern the relationship among cross-strait economic ties, Taiwan’s domestic politics, and China-Taiwan relations in the period from 1990 to 2008, consist of the four major arguments as follows.
1. The first argument (Argument 1):
The growth of cross-strait economic ties led to a political cleavage between the Taiwanese who benefited from the ties (i.e. the economic winners, most of whom were China-based Taiwanese business people) and those who did not (i.e. the economic losers, most of whom were unskilled or low-skilled Taiwanese workers).
2. The second argument (Argument 2):
Starting in 2001, Taiwanese politicians began to exploit the aforementioned cleavage to their political advantages: while the politicians who were anti-Taiwanese independence (i.e. the anti-independence politicians) formed a pro-openness coalition with the economic winners, the politicians who were pro-independence (i.e. the pro-independence politicians) formed an anti-openness coalition with the economic losers; and, from 2001 to 2008, the two coalitions conflicted with each other and tried to influence the Taiwanese government’s policy-making on the issues of cross-strait economic ties.
3. The third argument (Argument 3):
By 2008, the pro-openness coalition’s position eventually became more politically attractive to the Taiwanese general public than the anti-openness coalition’s position.
More specifically, from 2005 to 2008, the Taiwanese public, who believed that the ties would have a positive effect on Taiwan’s economy in general, became significantly supportive of the pro-openness coalition’s position when the pro-independence Taiwanese government revealed an unequivocal anti-openness tendency due to the pressure from the openness coalition. This development in turn destabilized the anti-openness coalition in the 2008 presidential election when its candidate tried to appeal to the pro-openness general public by revealing an election-driven pro-openness tendency. At the end, the general public’s pro-openness attitude and the contradiction between the anti-openness coalition and its candidate led to the victory of the pro-openness coalition in the 2008 presidential election.
4. The fourth argument (Argument 4):
The emergence of an anti-independence Taiwanese president in 2008 as a result of the victory of the pro-openness coalition in the 2008 presidential election, who was one of the anti-independence politicians and whose attitude toward China was much more reconciliatory compared with his predecessors who could be categorized as pro-independence politicians, led to relatively less confrontational China-Taiwan relations.
Here, I want to make three clarifications about the aforementioned arguments. First, while I only focus on “Taiwan’s domestic politics” in this dissertation as an intervening variable in the relationship between cross-strait economic ties and China-Taiwan relations, I have no intention to say that other variables including China’s domestic
politics do not matter. That being said, it is undeniable that the variable of Taiwan’s domestic politics is an important variable that can never be ignored when we study the cross-strait issues, especially those in and after the 1990s. Before the 1990s, Taiwan, with the U.S. help, was largely a responder to China’s threat to use force against the island to achieve its goal of “reunification.” However, since the 1990s when Taiwan began to challenge the idea of “one-China” it used to uphold and stopped pursuing the goal of “reunification” it used to regard as a national mission, its role as a responder to cross-strait tension has dramatically changed. More specifically, as Taiwan began to move away from the aforementioned idea and goal in the 1990s, it became, either voluntarily or involuntarily, an initiator of cross-strait conflict in which China’s role was turned into a responder to what it perceived as Taiwan’s “separatist” behavior. Because of this new situation, as Chas W. Freeman argues well, starting in the 1990s, the Taiwanese government’s decisions with regard to China-Taiwan relations, for the first time since the 1950s, could have a decisive impact on the stability across the Taiwan Strait: while it was the Chinese government’s military threat that posed real danger to peace before the 1990s, it has been the Taiwanese government’s political decisions that have an ability to pose such danger since the 1990s.35 From this point of view, Taiwan’s domestic politics, which has a great effect on the Taiwanese government’s political decisions about China, is undoubtedly one of the most important variables we have to take into account when studying China-Taiwan relations.
Second, while I try to argue in this dissertation that the economic factor played a role in the outcome of the 2008 Taiwanese presidential election, which in turn had a profound impact on China-Taiwan relations, I have no intention to say that other factors were not important. Actually, in the 2008 election, like the previous Taiwanese presidential elections, in addition to the issues of cross-strait economic ties, the issues about unification and independence were also very important.
It is worth noting that both of the candidates associated with the pro-openness and anti-openness coalitions in that election knew very well what the majority of the Taiwanese public wanted on the aforementioned issues: the Taiwanese public preferred (1) neither unification nor independence and (2) less restriction on cross-strait economic ties. On the issues about unification and independence, while Taiwanese nationalism had significantly grown since the early 1990s, most of the Taiwanese by the 2008 presidential election, though opposing unification, actually did not support Taiwan’s de jure independence, either. According to Chu, this pro-status quo attitude among the Taiwanese public could be partially attributed to the growth of cross-strait economic ties.36 More specifically, Taiwanese people did not want to see any radical independence movement destabilize China-Taiwan relations and, in turn, cause damage to cross-strait economic ties that they thought would benefit Taiwan’s economy. Due to this pro-status quo attitude revealed by the Taiwanese public, both candidates tried to move away from the extremes of the unification vs. independence spectrum and toward the middle, and they ended up being in a position that supported neither unification nor independence,
which to some extent alienated their supporters on the extremes (i.e. the diehard advocates of independence or unification).
As for the issues of cross-strait economic ties, both of the candidates proposed to lift the restriction on the economic ties. However, as I will argue in this dissertation, their pro-openness positions put them in two different political situations during the campaign period, which in turn brought them two different political fates at the end of the 2008 election. The pro-openness position of the candidate associated with the pro-openness coalition (nominated by the opposition party) successfully attracted the general public and satisfied his political allies, i.e. the economic winners and anti-independence politicians. By contrast, the pro-openness position of the candidate associated with the anti-openness coalition (nominated by the ruling party) was not only unattractive to the general public and the economic winners, who were suspicious about his election-driven pro-openness attitude and wanted to punish the incumbent’s party due to the incumbent’s anti-openness policy, but also opposed by his political allies, i.e. the economic losers and pro-independence politicians.
The third clarification that I want to make is that, while I try to argue in this dissertation that the growth of cross-strait economic ties in the period from 1990 to 2007 resulted in the relatively less confrontational China-Taiwan relations in 2008, I have no intension to say that the relatively low level of tension between China and Taiwan since 2008 is irreversible. First of all, in the post-2008 era, the level of tension might increase again in spite of the existence of an independence Taiwanese president if (1) the anti-independence president is unwilling to pursue unification due to the pro-status quo
attitude among the Taiwanese public, and (2) his or her election-driven unwillingness to pursue unification is perceived, either correctly or mistakenly, by China, whose ultimate goal is to achieve unification, as an anti-unification tendency. Secondly, a pro-independence presidential candidate might be electable again in the post-2008 era in spite of the growth of cross-strait economic ties and the Taiwanese public’s support for those ties if (1) the anti-independence candidate, though supporting economic openness, is perceived, either correctly or mistakenly, by the pro-status quo Taiwanese public as not only anti-independence but also pro-unification, and (2) the pro-independence candidate convinces, either sincerely or deceptively, the Taiwanese public that he or she is more interested in maintaining the status quo than pursuing de jure independence and that he or she does accept some degree of economic openness instead of completely opposing it. Here, it can be well argued that the reemergence of a pro-independence Taiwanese president (or the emergence of a Taiwanese president who is potentially pro-independence) under this circumstance would lead to confrontational China-Taiwan relations again because this kind of Taiwanese president, compared with an anti-independence president, is more inclined to adopt an uncompromising approach to China-Taiwan relations.
Research design
To prove that my arguments (i.e. the growth of cross-strait economic ties in the period from 1990 to 2007 led to the election of an anti-independence Taiwanese president in 2008 which in turn resulted in relatively less confrontational China-Taiwan relations
afterwards) are valid, I do the following three-stage research. The first stage of my research deals with the core dependent variable examined in this dissertation (i.e. the relatively less confrontational China-Taiwan relations after the 2008 presidential election). At this stage of research, I use extensive analysis of newspaper articles to demonstrate the ebb and flow of cross-strait relations in the period from 1990 to 2008. Then, at the second and the third stages of my research, I build the causal mechanism among the three core variables: (1) the growing cross-strait economic ties in the period from 1990 to 2007 (i.e. the core independent variable); (2) Taiwan’s domestic politics in the period from 1990 to 2008 (i.e. the core intervening variable); and (3) the relatively less confrontational China-Taiwan relations after the 2008 election (i.e. the core dependent variable). Specifically, the second stage of the research examines the relationship between the second and the third variables, and the third stage of the research explores the relationship between the first and the second variables. In general, I conduct a series of qualitative analyses to examine the relationship among the three aforementioned variables by exploring the relevant statistical data, public polls, political and economic events, as well as public statements and announcements made by the political and economic actors involved (i.e. the Taiwanese government, the Chinese government, Taiwanese politicians, Taiwanese business people, Taiwanese workers, etc.).
Stage One: identifying the core dependent variable
At the first stage of my research, I examine the level of confrontation between China and Taiwan after the 2008 presidential election by probing the cross-strait relations
before and after the Taiwanese presidential inauguration in May 2008. Three points about this stage of research are worth noting.
First, the “confrontation” between China and Taiwan is defined as follows: China-Taiwan relations are highly confrontational when there are many unilateral provocative actions against each other but few bilateral efforts to resolve the common problems facing them; by contrast, the relations are less confrontational when there are relatively more bilateral efforts but fewer unilateral actions.
Second, to demonstrate that China-Taiwan relations were confrontational before May 2008, I examine the events concerning the cross-strait relations from 1990 to 2008, especially focusing on the formal meetings between China’s A.R.A.T.S. and Taiwan’s S.E.F. The purpose here is to reveal that although a prospect of China and Taiwan bilaterally resolving the common problems they faced emerged in the period from 1992 to 1993, this prospect diminished from 1994 to 1999 and completely disappeared from 2000 to 2007 due to many of China’s and Taiwan’s provocative unilateral actions against each other.
Third, to demonstrate that cross-strait relations became relatively less confrontational from May 2008 to December 2008 after a decade of confrontation, I examine the events concerning cross-strait relations as well as the resumption of the formal contact between the A.R.A.T.S. and the S.E.F. in the aforementioned period. The purpose is to reveal that the prospect of China and Taiwan bilaterally resolving the common problems they faced did emerge again after May 2008.
Stage Two: building the relationship between Taiwan’s domestic politics and cross-strait relations (examining Argument 4)
At the second stage of my research, I examine Argument 4, trying to answer the question of whether the emergence of an anti-independence Taiwanese president in May 2008 reversed the confrontational nature of cross-strait relations over the previous decade. More specifically, I investigate whether Taiwanese presidents’ positions on China-Taiwan relations really matter when it comes to the level of confrontation across the Taiwan Strait. Three points about this stage of research are worth noting.
First, the independent variable at this stage of research is the Taiwanese presidents’ positions on cross-strait relations from 1990 to 2008, and the dependent variable is the China-Taiwan relations examined at the first stage of research. The major purpose of this stage of research is to find evidence supporting the argument that, in the period from 1990 to 2008, while the relations between China and Taiwan were highly confrontational when there was a pro-independence Taiwanese president (i.e. Lee Teng-hui in the period from 1990 to 2000 and Chen Shui-bian in the period from 2000 to 2008), the relations were relatively less confrontational when there was an anti-independence president (i.e. Ma Ying-jeou in 2008).
Second, at this stage of research, I also examine the growth of Taiwanese nationalism in the period from 1990 to 2008, during which people in Taiwan, at both the elite and mass levels, began to develop a Taiwanese identity and have a debate over the nature of cross-strait conflict (i.e. a debate on whether the conflict is a “domestic” or an “international” one). Here, I especially focus on (1) the emergence of the
pro-independence political coalition (i.e. the Pan-Green coalition) and the anti-pro-independence political coalition (i.e. the Pan-Blue coalition) in Taiwan’s domestic politics in 2001, and (2) the political conflict between them in the period from 2001 to 2008 as well as its effect on China-Taiwan relations.
Third, it is worth pointing out here that, after demonstrating at this stage of research that (1) Taiwanese presidents’ stances on cross-strait relations did have an effect on China-Taiwan relations and (2) the relatively less conformational China-Taiwan relations in 2008 were closely associated with the election of an anti-independence Taiwanese president, in order to prove that my argument about the relationship between cross-strait economic ties and China-Taiwan relations is valid, the next step is to find evidence showing that it is the growth of cross-strait economic ties that led to his election, which is the objective of the third stage of my research.
Stage Three: building the relationship between cross-strait economic ties and Taiwan’s domestic politics (examining Arguments 1, 2, and 3)
At the third stage of my research, I examine the other three arguments I made (i.e. Arguments 1, 2, and 3). The ways I explore these three arguments are described as follows.
The question I address here is whether growing cross-strait economic ties led to a political cleavage between the Taiwanese who benefited from the ties and those who did not. Two points with regard to this part of research are worth noting.
First, the independent variable here is the growth of cross-strait economic ties in the period from 1990 to 2008, measured by the statistical data about the amount of cross-strait trade as well as Taiwanese investment in China, and the dependent variable is the political cleavage between the Taiwanese who benefited from the ties (i.e. the economic winners, most of whom were China-based Taiwanese business people) and those who did not (i.e. the economic losers, most of whom were unskilled or low-skilled Taiwanese workers) in the same period, measured by the number of Taiwanese business associations in China, the capital outflow from Taiwan to China, the job opportunities moved from Taiwan to China, as well as the economic winners’ and losers’ positions on cross-strait economic ties.
Second, the major purpose of doing this part of research is to find evidence proving the argument that, from 1990 to 2008, the growth of cross-strait economic ties led to a political cleavage between the economic winners and losers. In addition, I examine the effect of the Taiwanese government’s anti-openness attitude toward cross-strait economic ties in the period from 1990 to 1999 on the emergence of the pro-openness consciousness among the economic winners as well as the effect of the change in such an attitude in 2000 on the emergence of the anti-openness consciousness among the economic losers.
The question I address here is whether the pro-independence and anti-independence politicians exploited the aforementioned political cleavage by forming the pro-openness coalition with the economic winners and the anti-openness coalition with the economic losers, respectively. Two points with regard to this part of research are worth noting. First, to demonstrate that the pro-independence and anti-independence politicians did exploit the cleavage between the economic winners and losers, I examine and compare (1) the pro-independence and anti-independence politicians’ positions on cross-strait economic ties in the period from 2001 to 2008, during which there was a severe conflict between the anti-independence Pan-Blue and the pro-independence Pan-Green in Taiwan’s domestic politics, and (2) the economic winners’ and losers’ opinions about cross-strait economic ties in the same period. The comparison is made here to see if the pro-independence politicians and the economic losers on the one side and the anti-independence politicians and the economic winners on the other side chose the similar priorities and sounded the similar themes on the issues of cross-strait economic ties. Second, the major purpose of doing this part of research is to find evidence with which to evaluate the following arguments: (1) the aforementioned coalitions emerged in 2001 when the political conflict between the Pan-Green and the Pan-Blue began; (2) from 2001 to 2008, the two coalitions conflicted with each other and tried to influence the Taiwanese government’s policy-making on the issues of cross-strait economic ties; and (3) the two coalitions were the major political actors in the 2004 and 2008 Taiwanese presidential elections.
